Podcast Summary:

Brett Hurt has some serious experience as a Founding CEO. Brett co-founded Bazaarvoice and served as CEO and President for seven and half years, leading the company from bootstrapped concept to almost 2,000 clients worldwide and through its successful IPO. He subsequently guided the company through a successful follow-on offering, and two acquisitions, PowerReviews and Longboard Media. Prior to Bazaarvoice, Brett founded Coremetrics and helped grow the company into a global, leading marketing analytics solution for the eCommerce industry before its acquisition by IBM.

Now, Brett is a seed-stage investor at Hurt Family Investments (HFI) in partnership with his wife, Debra. HFI are involved in 40 startups and counting. HFI has made 30 startup investments, 13 of which are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies.

In this incredible interview, Brett shares one of his top lessons learned on the journey from founder to CEO: “The CEO must constantly work on self-improvement and regularly take the time to reflect.” He explains how this approach to leadership helped him and his companies to success and how YOU can use it too.

Key Quotes:

“Work is more about integration than it is about separation.”

“The hardest decisions to make when you are a CEO is whether or not you are carrying someone on your executive team that you shouldn’t.”

“There are three things that are the most important things you can do…secure the resources…set the strategy…make sure you’ve got the right executive team around you.”